World Bowl Is Strictly European
Send two teams of American football players to Europe, keep them there for four months and then watch them beat up on your U.S.-based teams.
It was no summer camp for the London Monarchs and the Barcelona Dragons, but it got them to the World League of American Football’s first World Bowl.
The WLAF’s headquarters are on Madison Ave. in New York City, and its World Bowl is teeming with American players. But it is being played Sunday at Wembley, the home of English soccer, and there are no American teams in the final.
The World Bowl looks more like the European Bowl.
What happened to the Sacramento Surge, the New York-New Jersey Knights, the San Antonio Riders and the other U.S.-based teams battling for the WLAF’s first title?
The Monarchs beat them all, losing only one game and that was to the Dragons. Sunday’s game gives them a chance to avenge their only defeat.
The Dragons wound up 9-2 after their play-off victory over the Birmingham Fire and one of those defeats was in Europe, against the Frankfurt Galaxy.
The only U.S. based team to beat either of the finalists was San Antonio, which downed the Dragons 22-14 at home.
The Monarchs and the Dragons believe they are the best of the 10 teams in the league.
Both head coaches acknowledge that four months’ intensive training and camaraderie on foreign soil also helped.
“I really feel good for these young players who have given a lot to this team, staying away from home for so long,” said Dragons’ head coach Jack Bicknell.
“We came over here and spent four months together, eating in the same rooms, sleeping in the same complex and we all got on well,” he said.
“Like Jack’s team, we were all living under the same roof, eating in the same rooms,” said the Monarchs’ Larry Kennan, adding with a broad smile: “But we didn’t get on so well.”
“It’s been a great experience. We’ve travelled 22,000 miles in five weeks but now we Americans are sort of back home, here in England,” said Kennan, who had NFL coaching experience with the Los Angeles Raiders, Denver Broncos and Indianapolis Colts.
Named the WLAF’s Coach of the Year, Kennan now has the task of making sure the Monarchs’ name is the first to go on the league roll of honor.
Bicknell’s job is to fire his team up for a repeat of the 20-17 triumph on the same Wembley field two weeks ago. That hard-earned victory put the Dragons into the play-offs as a wild-card entry.
“It may be a disadvantage, playing them again so soon,” Bicknell said. “We know what we’ve seen but we don’t know what’s coming.”
The Monarchs have established a reputation as a third-quarter comeback team.
With quarterback Stan Gelbaugh named the league’s offensive most valuable player, they lead the league in points scored with 310.
Barcelona has the best turnover ratio in the league. In the play-off against the Birmingham Fire their swarming defense created six turnovers. The team allowed the Fire only 239 yards and restricted the home side to a final-quarter field goal.
Organizers hope for a 70,000-plus crowd which would eclipse the 61,946 that witnessed the first Super Bowl of 1967 between the Green Bay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs at the Los Angeles Coliseum.
ABC will broadcast the World Bowl live and TV networks in Britain, Spain, Germany, Austria and Canada also are showing the game. Organizers say ESPN International will show it in 55 countries and SuperChannel will reach 24 European nations plus Israel.
This may be Wembley’s first WLAF World Bowl. But the 64-year-old, 80,000-seat stadium, which staged the World Cup soccer final in 1966, has hosted five NFL American Bowl preseason games.
It will stage a sixth when the Philadelphia Eagles and the Buffalo Bills arrive next month.
“When I first came to an American Bowl final at Wembley, about one in 15 fans knew what was going on,” said World Bowl chairman Bob Payton.
“In the World Bowl I’ll reckon six out of every 10 will know the rules inside out.”
